ST. PAUL, Minn. -- Perhaps a young competitor best summed up the opening night of the U.S. women's figure skating championships.
"I think at this nationals, anything can happen," said Rachael Flatt, 15, who stands in third place after the short program.
Defending champion Kimmie Meissner rallied from an early tumble, but it wasn't enough to hold off a trio of dynamos who electrified the crowd at the Xcel Energy Center with performances worthy of a veteran.
Meissner had to settle for fourth place with a score of 57.58 -- 5.33 points behind Flatt and a whopping 12.65 points behind the leader, Mirai Nagasu.
The Bel Air teen called the fall on a triple flip -- the second element in her program -- "a silly mistake," and used it to gather herself.
"`All right, Kimmie, that's not right. There's no falling in figure skating,' " she said she thought to herself. "I've had falls in competitions, so I know how to recover from it."
Skating to "The Feeling Begins," Meissner landed a triple lutz-double toe combination jump and began checking off the other requirements. By the time she reached the double axel jump, she had a smile on her face.
She received a technical score of 30.58 and a component score of 28.00 for a total of 57.58 after a one-point deduction for the fall.
Nagasu, 14, last year's junior national champion, announced her arrival at the senior level with an opening triple lutz-triple toe combination and then tore through the rest of her program, skated to "I Got Rhythm," with joy and energy. The judges gave her a technical score of 41.40 and a component score of 28.83 for a total of 70.23. The crowd roared its approval.
"That was fun, pure fun," said Nagasu, the runner-up at junior worlds last year. "That's what I'm here to do."
Next up, Flatt answered with an almost equally dazzling performance to another George Gershwin standard, "It Ain't Necessarily So."
Flatt, in her second appearance as a senior, also executed a triple lutz-triple toe on her way to a technical score of 35.74 and a component score of 27.17 for a total of 62.91.
"It's so great to know I skated my best. I just knew I could do it," she said.
Skating near the end of the field of 20 competitors, Ashley Wagner altered the standings again with a performance to "King Henry VII" that included a triple lutz-triple loop.
"I thought the performance as a whole thing was good. I was just so excited to be out there," Wagner said.
